Hi everyone,
I've got a new update out now in beta. Faction selection is now on a 3d tabletop map, you can split armies again after merging them, and I've gone through a lot of the recent bug reports and sorted them out.
Cheers,
Joe
Faction selection
New games now start on a 3D tabletop with a paper map and banners at each capital.
Click a capital name in the sidebar (or on the map) to zoom the table onto that settlement.
Military
You can split a player army or navy from the Units tab. Select the companies you want, and they form a new force at the same location with their share of supplies, morale and veterancy. The original commander stays with the original force.
Personal Guards, levies, rebels, foederati, embarked armies, and fleets in port, on blockade, or carrying troops cannot be split.
Player armies and navies can be renamed from the sidebar, the same way settlements can.
The military sidebar header now shows the force's identity, current order, supplies and commands as labelled rows instead of unmarked icons.
Forced march says why it is locked, including while garrisoned, and unlocks again once the army leaves the settlement.
Armies next to a friendly settlement refill immediately from its stockpile, including after a capture. Armies further out in the province still take field supply gradually.
AI factions gather enough strength and siege equipment before they sit down outside a walled settlement, and armies under a commander join that commander's siege instead of standing around nearby.
Campaign
Foreign factions declare war again. Hostile opinion makes war more likely, friendly opinion makes it less likely, and neighbours now count occupied and subject land on both sides.
Population growth follows food production, not just stored reserves. Matching what people eat stops growth; a real surplus is needed for it to climb; and growth tapers off as a settlement fills up.
Limitanei officers are all male.
Characters and events
Newborns keep their father's family name instead of overwriting it with a generated surname.
Double-click a character portrait to jump to their faction capital. Single-click still opens the character. Commanders in the field still zoom to the army.
If you have a local event model installed, the game picks a working one instead of leaving events on scripted with models sitting unused.
Mod campaigns can show their own effect icons on event options.
Map and movement
Armies and navies no longer get stuck at water boundaries. Landing approaches use the navy's connected sea, and a failed movement path ends the order instead of retrying forever. Tutorial fleets use the same fix.
Clicking province territory at close zoom opens the settlement. Clicking the city itself still selects the settlement mesh.
Overlapping armies pick the one whose marker is closest to the cursor, not whichever is furthest back in camera depth.
Ground-cover grass takes map decals like the rest of the terrain.
Army strength numbers and capital stars on map glances are larger.
UI
Buttons, tabs, list rows and map glances now fire on mouse release, so you can abort a click by dragging off the control. Drag handles, sliders, scrollbars and camera orbit still start on press.
Clicks pass through the empty parts of round HUD chrome onto the map.
Building-sidebar scrollbar thumbs keep dragging after the cursor leaves the thumb.
War notifications use the right have/has for tribal names, and flavour quotes sit on their own line.
Modding
World Editor campaign rasters now use PNG.
Content-pack event effects can carry their own icons.
Performance and stability
Loading a save no longer advances extra startup days, so the campaign date stays where you left it.
Saved battles restore their formations properly, and destroyed formations are cleaned up without leaving stale attacks behind.
Upgraded buildings count as their earlier buildings for prerequisite checks, including for the AI.
Texture streaming uses the VRAM you actually have, instead of a pool that was too small for the campaign map.
Campaigns hitch less while the AI is reviewing its armies, and character/calendar lookups are cheaper.
The game should no longer crash after long sessions and when loading.
Starting or loading a campaign no longer opens a second UI view behind the loading screen.